Small Details In Logan Only True Fans Noticed

Logan is the perfect coda to Hugh Jackman's seventeen-year run as the one and only Wolverine. He's played the same superhero for a record number of years, so his release from the mutant berserker's adamantium-laced skeleton is well-deserved, as much as we hate to see him go. Throughout Logan, even casual fans could spot things from Wolverine's long and storied history both on-screen and in the comics, but what were some of the moments that only true fans may have noticed? *WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD*

In the world of Logan, mutants are no longer being born all willy-nilly into the world, thanks to the machinations of Dr. Zander Rice, who has cornered the market on artificially mutated kids, in an effort to militarize them. More than once, Logan and Professor X refer to the fact that there are no more "new mutants," except for maybe the Professor's pint-size new psychic pen-pal, Laura Kinney.

Comic fans know that Marvel literally had a team called the "New Mutants," who were originally a bunch of young mutants under the tutelage of Professor X. While the other kids in the Transigen project didn't share the names with any notable comic book New Mutants members, we did spy a Rictor in the bunch. That's crossover enough for us!

Rictor is known to Marvel fans as a member of the mutant team X-Factor, because there were dozens of mutant teams running around in the late '80s and early '90s. For real, you couldn't swing a cat without knocking over a human-sized pile of mutant comics that are, to this day, still worthless. It was a serious mess, and part of that mess was Julio Richter. Like his movie counterpart, Rictor was able to control vibrations or, if you want to get technical, "seismic energy." Not coincidentally, after joining the X-Terminators (who were good guys, despite their nefarious name), Rictor moved in with the New Mutants.

It's implied that the other Transigen kids share DNA with various mutants who share ice powers, electricity powers, and ... grass-growing powers. We're assuming that's what the terribly-named "Pine Cone Girl" does but, as it stands now, Logan intentionally diverted from the path of known heroes to make their new potential super-team.

We never get to find out what's actually in Eden, if Eden exists at all, or what, if anything, happens when the band of kids reaches Canada, but we can assume it's probably good news. Someone is there waiting for them ... but who? Canada doesn't keep a lot of regular superheroes in the Marvel universe, but it is where the Weapon Plus program was originally run, so maybe there are some mutant experts still holed up in the Great White North. Aside from that, Canada's pretty much only got Alpha Flight, which is like the Avengers, but way more polite and a little more Sasquatch-y, and they don't really have a history of harboring runaways.

If we're following Old Man Logan rules, Emma Frost provided the only mutant safe haven in America, so maybe the ice queen is providing the same kind of sanctuary. Either way, that's one hell of a cliffhanger.

Logan was based — and we use the term "based" extremely lightly — on the comic series Old Man Logan by Mark Millar. The similarities, however, are scarce. Both were about an aging Wolverine on a road trip to deliver something ... but that's where any parallels ended. One thing common to both, however, was the idea that mutants were not, in fact, the next step in the evolution of mankind. Marvel's generally maintained that their mutants are just the logical expansion of humanity — over time, people get smarter, live longer, grow taller, and generally change to suit their environment. Why wouldn't the next step in that process be "become a walking weapon seemingly made of magic?"

But in both Logan and Old Man Logan, it's stated that this isn't the case. Mutants didn't save the world, and mankind is still destroying itself. Emma Frost makes a similar argument in the comic pages, and a defeated Logan mirrors the sentiment on-screen. Sorry, muties — you weren't the next step in human evolution. You were more like ... modern-day Red Deer Cave people, only more snikt-y.

Marvel's "Weapon Plus" program is responsible for a whole ton of super-powered heroes and villains, including Deadpool, Captain America, the confusing Fantomex, and a truly weird pathogenic religion that we can't even start to explain. It also created X-23, aka Laura Kinney, aka Wolverine's girl clone. The list of weirdos coming out of the program goes on and on ... but it never includes an X-24. It stops just short of there. So, when a younger, faster, sexier Wolverine-lookalike with the name X-24 pops up and starts beating up Logan, it's a surprise to comic fans everywhere...

...unless they're familiar with Albert, Wolverine's cyborg copy who first appeared in Wolverine #37, who was also created by Donald Pierce and the Reavers. Of course, it was 1991 and Marvel was cranking out dispensable heroes and villains left and right (we're looking at you, Bloodscream), so we forgive you if you forgot about Wolverine's nightmare-fuel doppel-bot.

The X-movies are a bit lousy with continuity problems but, to be absolutely fair, so are the X-Men comics. Perhaps the most glaring weirdness in Logan is the fact that Caliban, played awesomely by Stephen Merchant, is not the same Caliban as in X-Men Apocalypse. Granted, Caliban is a C-level mutant who's lucky he was thrown a movie bone at all, but the only way anyone can accept the X-Movie franchise's countless continuity errors is to just assume that each movie peels off into a slightly different timeline than the last. That way, dead characters are magically still alive, no one ages consistently, and a different actor can just hop into another one's spot.

In this kind of flexible reality, we can surmise that Logan doesn't fit into any previous timelime — that way, we can dream that Wolverine didn't die impaled on a spike, and is instead enjoying a cigar in a really gross bar somewhere.

The X-iverse — or whatever comic nerds are calling it — concedes that their heroes have outlandish comics written about them. In the world of the X-Men, the team really existed, and they really had cool adventures, but they weren't as cool as the printed page implies. We have movies "based on a true story," they have comics based on the same thing.

So, when Wolverine flashes Laura's comics on screen, calling them out for the fantastical fiction they are, true fans can tell that these aren't genuine X-Men comics, but reasonably constructed props. Sure, they were drawn by legit Marvel artists, but both the covers and interior art were made just for Logan. It's pretty much the best anti-Easter egg we could've asked for.

Over the course of Logan, we're given a few reference points to big events seen and unseen. The biggest unseen event was obviously whatever telepathic A-bomb Charles Xavier accidentally set loose in Westchester, but it's a reference to the Statue of Liberty that brings the whole saga to a fitting close.

See, back in the very first X-Men movie, before epic movie-verses were even a thing, everything culminated on Lady Liberty herself. So, even if we have a whole cast of characters who can't decide what's happened, who they are, or if they're actually dead or not ... we'll always have the purity of X-Men 1, and that big ol' battle in New York.

As Logan pages through the X-23 kids' files, true fans noticed some familiar names on the list of genetic parents. For instance, Avalanche is named as the father of Rictor who — surprise, surprise — has seismic powers, just like his dad. (Look out for Rictor in the upcoming X-Force movie, by the way.)

Another name we find among the files is that of Christopher Bradley, the chap you see above. He's a mutant with the power to wield electricity. Bradley served with Wolverine on William Stryker's Team X, and his offspring is electrically inclined as well. It's always sweet when kids follow in their parents' footsteps.

We're glad X-Men Origins was made, because its God of War-inspired goretacular video game was totally killer. Otherwise, however, it's a travesty that introduced several misguided concepts into an already muddled continuity. Chief among these flubs? The adamantium bullet. In that movie, an adamantium bullet gives Wolverine the most convenient case of amnesia this side of a rock to the head.

In Logan, an adamantium bullet won't just mess with Logan's mind — it'll stone-cold kill him. And for a while, it almost looked like Logan would indeed die by his own hand — and, well, he sort of does. The use of the bullet to kill Wolverine's nemesis, X-24, was a stroke of genius, making it the second — and final — good thing to come out of the convoluted mess of a movie that was Origins.

Our only question is: why didn't the other adamantium bullet kill Wolverine the way it takes out X-24? One can never know, as Wolvie died too quickly for anyone to grab a second bullet and find out for sure.

True fans know about the Weapon X program's ties to Nathaniel Essex and Essex Corp. Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mr. Sinister, was rumored to be the main villain in Logan, but he turned out to be nothing at all. Director James Mangold decided that the character's "operatic highly-costumed, stroboscopic villainy" just didn't work with the film's grittier, more serious, less cartooney, everybody-dies-but-the-kids tone.

That leaves Logan's writers in a pickle: how can you discuss the Weapon X program without mentioning Essex Corp., the organization responsible for the research? Enter Transigen Corp. This evil corporate organization is new, invented entirely to accommodate James Mangold's gritty vision. But a mutant-generating machine by any other name is still Essex, and still just as sinister.

Reavers Mohawk, Macon, Bone Breaker, and Pretty Boy all appear briefly in Logan. In terms of characterization, they're virtually indistinguishable from the numerous other thugs in Donald Pierce's posse, each of whom is credited as, simply, "Reaver." Stormtroopers are more individualistic than these guys.

In the comics, Donald Pierce and the Reavers look way different. Donald Pierce himself is an industrialist with a flair for frilly shirts, and a fondness for solid silver battle suits. His Reavers are adorned with metallic gadgetry. For instance, Macon sports a visor similar to the one Cyclops wears. Reese's entire face is made of metal. Frankly, they look like robots, whereas in the movie, they've been turned into goons with robotic prosthetic limbs. It's kind of a letdown, though given the movie's "grounded" tone, the changes generally work.

That said, we missed the hell out of Lady Deathstrike (she of the forgettable long-nailed cameo in X:2). She was a late-joiner to the Reavers, and has a complicated history with Wolverine in the Uncanny X-Men comics. Here? She doesn't exist. Apparently, Wolvie's only allowed to clash with one female per film, and this time it was the ten-year-old's turn.

Did The Wolverine foreshadow how Logan would end? It would appear so, as Twitter user MauriceTheChosenOne makes a pretty good argument for the theory. Basically, in The Wolverine, James Mangold's first at-bat with an X-Men property, the mutant named Yukio tells Wolverine, "I see you on your back, there's blood everywhere. You're holding your own heart in your hand." Jump to Logan — how did Wolvie wind up? On his back, blood everywhere, clutching his daughter's hand in his. She, after all they'd been through, was his heart. His heart was in his hands.

Not bad at all, Maurice. Adding even more credibility, Mangold himself praised the theory via Twitter, which more or less makes it canon. So, was it planned all along, or was it a clever in-joke that turns a throwaway line into something cool for true fans to discover? That might be the only Logan-related mystery harder to crack than "Why did Laura only use her foot claws once? Those things were awesome."